The makers of Readability aren’t the only small app developers openly criticizing Apple this morning for their prohibitive new in-app subscription and purchasing guidelines. The makers of Tiny Grab — a social screen grabbing service — have just posted an open letter of their own, explaining in detail how the new in-app policies would prevent them from coming to the Mac App Store.
Why? Apple’s new guidelines don’t allow them to offer goods that exist outside the app and the app store… a must for any cross-platform, digital locker app that exists by selling access to new features or more storage instead of traditional in-app content.
We’ve already seen two of the major streaming music subscription services openly revolt in response to Apple’s newly prohibitive in-app purchase guidelines, demanding a 30% cut on all subscriptions, products and services offered through any iOS app. Now smaller devs are starting to pipe up too.
Arc90 — the developers of Readability, a cross-platform Javascript plug-in that enhances online content by simplifying it down to its barest and most readable elements — were developing an iOS subscription app leveraging Instapaper’s technology that would allow them to give 70% of their income to the content producers being read through their service. It was an innovative and practically revolutionary plan to reward authors for their work while enhancing the user’s reading experience by stripping out advertisements, and you can read more about Arc90’s plans for the app in our exclusive interview.
Unfortunately, it now seems that Readability will not be coming to iOS: according to Apple’s tightened restrictions, the Readability app was rejected by Apple for utilizing a subscription system that doesn’t use Apple’s In App Purchase API.
Apple, in other words, wants their 30% cut…. and Arc90 is hopping mad about it, having posted a scathing open letter about the matter on their official blog, in which they accuse Apple of greed and turning their backs on the developers who made iOS such a rich, dynamic and innovative platform to begin with.
The Arc90 blog is being hammered right now, so we’ve posted a copy of their letter after the jump.
The incredible indie sensation Minecraft has sold over 1.3 million copies since it was first released halfway through last year, and it’s still only in beta. Expect the amount of copies sold to quickly grow as high as one of Minecraft‘s physics-defying, voxel-based fantasy structures in 2011, though, because dev Mojang has just announced that Minecraft will be coming to iOS in 2011.
This one’s for the sharps: an official pack of playing cards featuring OS 7 icons instead of faces and suits is now available on eBay. It’s a real Apple product, originally sold only to Apple employees from the Apple campus store.
Current bid is a respectable £51.00, although my guess is that before bidding ends, you’ll be out a bad Blackjack streak in Vegas’ worth of chips to acquire this lovely retro deck. I’m tempted to bid myself: this would be the perfect deck to add insult to injury to the inamorata in my ongoing, fifteen-game Cribbage winning streak.
Wireless carriers in the United Kingdom are drastically lowering their subsidized prices on the original iPad, strongly suggesting that they are clearing inventory in anticipation of the imminent launch of the iPad 2.
In November of last year, Cult of Mac reported that the iPhone 5 would gain a near-field communications chip, which would enable an ambitious remote computing scheme that would effectively allow you to take your desktop Mac’s settings and files “on the road” with you, syncing it with another Mac just by waving your iPhone in front of the screen.
Now Apple has been awarded a software patent for a new OS X feature that could be an integral part of their future remote computing plans: it describes a way for users to secure vital files in a virtual ‘safe deposit box’ which would then encrypt them and possibly even upload them to the cloud.
Remember the WALDok? It sounded like the unholy cybernetic offspring of WALL-E and Iron Man’s creepy hypercephalic floating robot head nemesis, MODOK, but the WALDok was actually a Kickstarter project for a gorgeously compact speaker dock for the iPod nano capable of outputting some truly impressive sound while simultaneously juicing you up.
The only problems with the WALDok? First, it was iPod nano only… a design decision which seemed to unnecessarily specify the WALDok into obscurity. Second, as a Kickstarter project, it hadn’t yet made enough money in $59 pledges to guarantee that it would ever be made.
Luckily, over the weekend, both problems resolved themselves. Designer Hern Kim not only redesigned the WALDok to accommodate other iPod models, but also surpassed the $30,000 pledge total thanks to some publicity from Gizmodo and Wired, meaning that the WALDok will soon be a very real product. $59 pledged at this point is as good as a pre-order. Hooray!
At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, over twenty tablets made their debut running Google’s tablet-centric flavor of Android, Honeycomb… but if early indications are anything to go by — namely, the Motorola Xoom 3G’s entry-level price of $799 — it looks like none of these tablets will be competitive with the iPad. If the so-called “Apple Tax” is real, why can’t the competition beat the iPad in price?
Wired’s Brian X. Chen has an excellent overview of the many reasons that other tablet makers are just not able to compete with the iPad’s price tag. There’s a lot of factors at play here, but essentially, what it all comes down to is that Apple doesn’t have to pay a cut of every iPad to nearly as many parties as Motorola, say, has to pay for the Xoom.
Apple’s A4 chip design is owned by them, so they don’t have to pay licensing fees. They sell the iPad primarily through their online store or their 300 retail locations, which means other retailers don’t take as much of a cut. They don’t have to license an operating system. Furthermore, Apple can subsidize each iPad in small part thanks to the cut they make on every sale made through iTunes, including the App Store, their music and video stores and the iBookstore.
All together, it looks like the reason competing manufacturers can’t make a tablet with the same features and price as the iPad is because it’s impossible for anyone but Apple to do so at this point. Apple’s the only device manufacturer out there in control of its own manifest destiny from hardware through software, from physical retail presence down to digital delivery. Forget the Apple Tax: the sub-$500 tablet is a product only Apple is in a position to make.
Light Peak is likely on its way to Apple’s 2011 Mac line up, and might debut in Thursday’s MacBook Pro refresh… but what about Apple’s iOS products? MacRumors postulates that Light Peak is also coming to the iPad 2. We seriously doubt it, though.
The new MacBook Pros are due on Thursday according to pervasive Internet scuttlebutt, and at the very least, a jump to Intel’s new Sandy Bridge architecture is a sure thing… but another state-of-the-art Intel technology might be coming to them as well, with Mactrast reporting that the February 24th MBP refresh might include the adoption of Intel’s Light Peak technology.
Apple has delayed shipping MacBook Pros on its online store for 3-5 business days… delaying the earliest day you can have a MacBook Pro shipped to you to well-ahead of the rumored Thursday launch of the next-gen MacBook Pros. Given how religious Apple’s Tim Cook is about supply, this has all the markings of an official MacBook Pro refresh.
Before the Mac, before the Apple II, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak made their first product: a digital Blue Box for hacking into telephone systems. In this clip from the 1998 documentary Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, Jobs describes how the capability of this device so impressed two young teenagers that they began to realize the power of ideas and the potential of technology to control vast amounts of information.
If we hadn’t made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple.
They also realized the importance of good product packaging – nice wooden shipping case!
Apple appears to have re-introduced the full version of field test mode in iOS 4.3 Beta 3, which will allow you to quickly check the quality of your cellular signal by simply dialing: *3001#12345#* and pressing Call on your iPhone.
Under iOS 4.0 the field test vanished much to everyone’s dismay during Antennagate last year only to have a much simplified version reappear in iOS 4.1 that looked like this:
AT&T is now offering information about their 4G HSPA+ coverage in the U.S. The cities and areas that have completed the backhaul upgrades to support this are:
●Bay Area, CA
●Greater Los Angeles, CA
●Northern, CA
●Chicago, IL
●Boston, MA
●Baltimore, MD
●Charlotte, NC
●Buffalo, NY
●Providence, RI
●Houston, TX
●Dallas, TX
●Puerto Rico
If your area has HSPA+, but not the backhaul upgrade then you will not be able to experience the new 4G network speeds. However, AT&T’s network completely supports HSPA+ and they will eventually have the backhaul upgraded everywhere else.
You can check out AT&T’s coverage map that includes 4G coverage by visiting www.att.com/network and clicking on the coverage tab. Hovering your mouse over the map will reveal the 4G HSPA+ cities and locations listed above.
Have you noticed the difference? Tell us about it by leaving a comment.
Our roundup of must-have iOS apps from this week includes Camera+ – quite possibly the best, and certainly the most popular, photography application for the iPhone. It’s so good that it has replaced Apple’s official Camera app on my iPhone’s home screen, and is now my go-to application for snapping all my photos
Also to feature is Readlines – an application that makes great use of your iOS device while it’s sat in its dock on your desk, and turns an otherwise boring blank screen in to a big, bold stream of random headlines from your Google Reader RSS feeds.
Tap Forms Databaseon your iPhonemeans you can forget sifting through every piece of paper in your home to find your insurance details when you need to make a claim, or panicking because you’ve forgotten your PIN at the ATM when you need some cash – it’s now with you wherever you go.
Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves, including HubbleSiteand Inception: App Edition, after the break!
For people like me, and the other 28 million living with cancer, people like Steve Jobs are incredible role models. When I was undergoing chemotherapy three years ago, I was often tempted to think “why me?” But then I asked myself, “Why Steve Jobs? Why Lance Armstrong?” And I reflected on the remarkable things that they went on to achieve after their treatment. Their inspirational example helped me more than I can say.
Steve Jobs chooses not to talk about his cancer. He prefers to focus on his work. We should respect his choice.
This week’s must-have iOS games includes the incredible sequel to Gameloft’s hugely successful sci-fi FPS, N.O.V.A.This follow up title boasts new enemies with improved AI, a larger range of weapons and powers, and 10-on-10 online multiplayer – you won’t want to miss it!
Starfront: Collisionis the second of Gameloft’s latest hits to make our list this week. Once again the company has looked at an incredibly popular game and created an iOS alternative that doesn’t disappoint. It’s a model they’ve been following for while with their App Store releases, and one that certainly seems to be working well for them. For fans of Blizzard’s Starcraft seriesand other real-time strategies, I highly recommend Starfront: Collision.
Since I first read it was coming, Back to the Future: Episode 1for iPad was a game I couldn’t wait to see hit the App Store, and thanks to its striking voiceovers and delightful story line, the wait for this game didn’t disappoint. It’s sure to warm the hearts of fans of the movie and firmly earns its place in our favorite games.
Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of this week’s must-have, including Mahjongg Dimensionsand Sky Combat, after the break!
Wired's June 1997 cover. Apple was in deep trouble at the time. The article numbers "101 way to save Apple"
In 1997, Apple was in deep financial trouble. Wired published a now-famous cover story: “101 Ways to Save Apple.”
Some of the advice was prescient, some was silly, but it was a fascinating list of suggestions. And what actually happened between now and then is even more interesting.
Here, for the first time, is a really detailed followup to each and every one of Wired‘s 101 suggestions.
What’s up with that? Apple’s big product launches are almost always on Tuesdays. (It allows reporters on the East Coast to fly into California on a workday instead of the weekend).
So why would Apple launch new MacBooks on Thursday February 24?
2011 MacBook Pro mockup by designer Dario Crisafulli.
It’s new MacBook Pros next Thursday February 24, according to MacRumors, citing a “reliable” source.
We’ve since heard reliable confirmation that this information is accurate and that the expected release date is next Thursday, February 24th. The move would be a bit unusual for Apple to launch new machines on a Thursday. So, if you are about to buy a new MacBook Pro, wait until next week.
MacBooks were last updated a year ago with Intel Core i5 and i7 chips. The new machines are likely to get Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge processors, which are faster and a lot less power hungry. Rumors that the machines will have cases made of Liquidmetal are unlikely, but they will probably will be lighter, thinner and have higher-resolution screens. A big price drop is predicted too.
Apple’s said to be releasing five new models, which will include two new 13-inch versions, two new 15-inch versions and one new 17-inch version.
Years ago, the Sun tabloid newspaper kidnapped a donkey and kept it in a Spanish hotel room for a story. Yesterday, Gizmodo hired a plane to take aerial photos of Steve Jobs’ demolished mansion.
Demolition began Monday of the abandoned mansion. Jobs won a long legal battle to have the old pile torn down. He wants to build a smaller, greener place on the property.
Camera+ – ($0.99 for a limited time) iPhone – Photography
Camera+is quite possibly the best, and certainly the most popular, photography application for the iPhone. It’s so good that it has replaced Apple’s official Camera app on my iPhone’s home screen, and is now my go-to application for snapping all my photos. With dozens of effects, touch exposure and focus, 6x digital zoom, and multiple scene modes, Camera+ is the ultimate way to get the most out of your iPhone’s photos.
In addition to a major updated that includes over 50 awesome new features and improvements, Camera+ has also been reduced for a limited to time to just $0.99. Anyone who’s used Camera+ on their iPhone will agree that you won’t find a better day-to-day photography app, and with the recent performance tweaks and new features, $0.99 for this fantastic application is a steal!
Is Apple looking to build an HDTV? If the pidgin English grammar and bizarre, otherworldly syntax of this job listing are to be believed, then yes!
In this position, you will be part of pride developing innovative designs, which are implemented in products used by millions of people. The position primarily involves high-density offline power supply’s development for Apple’s next generation Macintosh platforms spanning from notebook computers, desktop computers, servers, standalone displays and TV.
Why Apple would get into the high-definition television business when they can turn any television into an Apple TV just by plugging in a $99 box is beyond me, but we’re sure just the whiff of this news gave Gene Munster— who has long believed in the unicorn of a real AppleTV — a pelvic scimitar.
Throwing some more fuel on the fire of an imminent Sandy Bridge refresh of the MacBook Pro line, Apple Insider is confirming that their sources have told them that new models are coming this week.
People familiar with the matter say the Cupertino-based company late this week began briefing several of its operating segments to be on stand-by for a significant product launch that could come as early as next week. Those same people were not yet made privy to the specifics of the launch, however, which had earlier been anticipated for the following week.
Buckle up. We’re looking at a new Apple product launch, and if the rumors are to be believed, that will not only see MacBook Pros getting a whole lot faster, but they might have modular hard/optical drive bays, ubiquitous SSDs and be built out of futuristic LiquidMetal as well.
The first in a series of five highly-anticipated Back to the Future games for the iPad has finally hit the App Store with a brand new escapade for Marty and Doc. This touch-based puzzle adventure features striking voiceovers and a delightful story line that is sure to warm the hearts of fans of the movie. I adore how Telltale Games’ efforts have delivered a mesmerising experience that remains true to the original trilogy, with innovative touch controls and impressive visuals that make Back to the Future: Episode 1 a fantastic iPad game.
Set 6 months after the events in the third movie, this storyline sees Marty take off in the DeLorean to save Doc once again. If you’re a fan of this movie and a lover of adventure games, this title is a sure-fire way to cure your weekend boredom – I’m certain you won’t be able to put it down.
The other four episodes in this series are scheduled for release on a monthly basis, so look out for episode two in mid March.
